Forbidden Earl Next Door by Tess Aubrey

 

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Tasteless Mothers and Misplaced Honor
This is one serious age-gap romance—minus the actual romance.
We have an eighteen-year-old debutante thrust into the Season the very same day she buried her father. A tasteless move by her mother, to say the least. Enter Lord Banbury, a man twenty years Rebecca’s senior, courting her with a vigor that feels entirely unseemly. Then there is Lord Normanby, a man with honor so misplaced it borders on frustrating; he should have destroyed Banbury ten years ago rather than settling for a quiet, private blackmail to save Rebecca’s sister.
In Regency England, the aristocracy has two courts: the law and society. For a villain like Banbury, it shouldn't matter which delivers the blow, so long as he is either jailed or utterly crucified by the ton and financially ruined.
While the characters are well-defined in their flaws and the plot is solidly written, Rebecca’s compliance is hard to swallow. Letting her mother match her up with a man old enough to be her father—not once, but twice—is simply ridiculous.